Securely keeping secrets and passwords
We've cautioned several times about the importance of safely handling user identification information. The intention to safely handle that data is one thing, but it is important to follow through and actually do so. While we're using a few good practices so far, as it stands, the Notes application would not withstand any kind of security audit:
- User passwords are kept in clear text in the database
- The authentication tokens for Twitter et al, are in the source code in clear text
- The authentication service API key is not a cryptographically secure anything, it's just a cleartext UUID
If you don't recognize the phrase clear text, it simply means unencrypted. Anyone could read the text of user passwords or the authentication tokens. It's best to keep both encrypted to avoid information leakage.
Keep this issue in the back of your mind because we'll revisit these and other security issues in Chapter 12, Security.
